The Final Storm (69 page)

From San Diego he once again embarks on the journey by train to Albuquerque, and is met this time by a one-woman welcoming committee. He and Loraine Lancaster marry four months later.

Like his brother before him, Clay has no interest in following his father’s dismal career in the copper mines of western New Mexico, and where Jesse goes to California, Clay obeys his young wife’s ambitions to travel eastward. The couple settles in Lexington, Kentucky, where they raise three daughters.

Clay graduates from the University of Kentucky and surprises Loraine by choosing the study of military science and history. After graduation in 1950, his combat experience lands him a position with the university as an instructor of ROTC cadets. Though he rarely speaks of his service experience
on Okinawa, Clay is an outspoken advocate for education in the ranks of the military. By the mid-1960s the Vietnam War has made that philosophy increasingly unpopular. He speaks out frequently in support of the nation’s efforts in Vietnam, and never fully grasps the nation’s change of mood toward the military and its leadership. In 1970, a fire, presumed to be arson, destroys the facility that houses the school’s air force ROTC. Disgusted, Clay leaves Kentucky for a position as an instructor of history at the Virginia Military Institute. His love of history deepens, and Clay begins extensive work on a biography of several of VMI’s most illustrious alumni, and has a particular affection for Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, but the effects of heart disease begin to drain him of strength, and the work is never completed.

In 1984 he retires and settles into the farm country of the Shenandoah Valley. He dies of heart disease in 2007, at age eighty-two. Loraine lives today in their family home near the New Market Battlefield, outside Harrisonburg, Virginia.

The Sixth Division’s downsizing does not affect the squad leader, who pushes hard to continue his career in the Corps. Mortensen is promoted to first sergeant in August 1946 and remains in service through the Korean War. When the brigade is revitalized as the reactivated Third Marine Division, Mortensen applies for and receives a commission as second lieutenant, and is awarded the bronze star for action in Korea. By the war’s end he has been promoted to the rank of major. He retires in June 1955 and settles in Vienna, Virginia. That year Mortensen marries Constance Fowler, a secretary at the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C., and she encourages him to seek a position there. Always an advocate for the care of ailing veterans, he agrees, and continues his work on behalf of veterans until his retirement in 1977. He moves to Venice, Florida, and dies in 2008, at age ninety-one.

The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is generally credited as accounting for the most cataclysmic loss of Japanese life, but LeMay’s aggressive bombing campaigns produce losses to the Japanese citizenry that far
exceed those two blasts. LeMay’s
bomb ’em and burn ’em
philosophy reduces more of Japan to ash than both atomic bombs combined, and LeMay is somewhat justified in claiming that it is his airplanes that win the war, responsible for the destruction of sixty-five Japanese cities, causing more than a million Japanese casualties, and devastating more than ten million Japanese residences.

After the war LeMay is selected to head the United States Air Force command in Europe, and in 1948 is instrumental in the Berlin Airlift, which parachutes much-needed food and supplies into the German capital, breaking a blockade imposed on the city by the Soviets. Later that year LeMay becomes the first commander of the new Strategic Air Command, and works tirelessly to expand the role of the Air Force as a key component of America’s military arsenal. He is promoted to full (four-star) general in 1951, the youngest to achieve that rank since Ulysses S. Grant. He heads SAC until 1957 and is widely regarded as the engineer of America’s line-in-the-sand approach to the threat of Soviet missile attacks, thus ensuring that the Cold War remains cold.

He serves as air force chief of staff until 1961 and retires from active duty in 1965. Always a vocal critic of the “softening” of America’s defensive shields, including what he sees as America’s tentative strategies in the Vietnam War, a frustrated LeMay sees an opportunity to put his viewpoint on a loud pedestal. He accepts the opportunity to run as the vice presidential candidate as part of Alabama governor George Wallace’s third-party campaign in the 1968 presidential election. Though Wallace has little expectation of winning, his high visibility brings out the most militant viewpoints of many in this country, who are mostly silenced by the vast outpouring of protest against the war. It is LeMay who uses that opportunity to express his support for the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam, an incendiary philosophy that only helps polarize an already divided nation.

After the election, LeMay fades from public view, settles in California, and dies in 1990, at age eighty-three. He is buried at the United States Air Force Academy Cemetery, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The thirty-third president of the United States is a man both loved and despised during his terms of office, usually striving for what he believes to be in the nation’s best interests as opposed to the will of the politicians who
surround him. He seeks reelection in 1948 and scores a stunning upset over the heavily favored New York governor, Thomas Dewey. During his tenure, he supports his new secretary of state, George C. Marshall, a key force behind what is titled the Marshall Plan. From 1947 through 1952, the plan puts into action an outflow of American aid and other financial policies that rebuild Western Europe and thus do much to revitalize the economy of a significant portion of the industrialized world.

Though accused by his political enemies of being tentative in what many see as a crucial struggle to prevent the spread of communism, he adopts the Truman Doctrine, offering unwavering support to any nation that faces a blatant threat of Soviet expansion beyond those borders the Soviets seal off in 1945, what Winston Churchill refers to as the “Iron Curtain.” In that same vein, Truman participates in the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and vigorously supports American involvement in the United Nations.

In 1949, when the Soviet Union develops its own nuclear weapons, Truman recognizes the value of deterrence and supports the development and construction of larger and more effective weaponry, including the hydrogen bomb, which is significantly more powerful than the two bombs exploded over Japan in 1945. That policy remains controversial and is an integral part of international relations to this day.

In 1950 Truman vigorously supports intervention by the United Nations into an explosion of conflict in Korea. The nation, occupied during World War II by Japan, has been divided virtually in half by agreements and treaties that rarely involve the Koreans themselves, with an artificial border placed across the country at the Thirty-eighth Parallel. The north, influenced heavily by Soviet and Chinese politics and weaponry, invades the American-supported south, resulting in a response Truman labels a “police action.” But the war in Korea stretches past Truman’s own presidency, and fighting does not wind down until 1954. During the conflict there is considerable disagreement between Truman and Supreme Military Commander General Douglas MacArthur as to how the war should be fought. In August 1951 that conflict reaches its climax when Truman relieves MacArthur of his command, replacing him with General Matthew Ridgway. MacArthur returns home something of a political martyr and takes full advantage of a considerable volume of hero worship, at Truman’s expense. The result, for a president whose popularity with the American
people vacillates to either extreme, is that Truman leaves office with the lowest approval rating in history.

Truman’s strength of will is consistently underestimated, and his homespun charm is often thought a sign of weakness. But what his political enemies view as weakness, the American public mostly takes to heart, and despite the various controversies, time heals America’s perception of their thirty-third president. Truman becomes generally beloved, especially as the memories of his presidency fade, and he is today considered one of the twentieth century’s more capable and popular presidents.

After leaving office, Truman and his wife, Bess, return to their home in Independence, Missouri. Truman will accept no compensation from any private corporation, and thus he and Bess subsist on his soldier’s pension from World War I, little more than one hundred dollars per month. That an American president should be virtually destitute is an embarrassment the Congress rectifies, and in 1958 Truman is awarded a permanent pension of twenty-five thousand dollars per year.

He pens his memoirs, published in 1955, but signs a publishing contract that limits his royalties severely, thus he never receives the level of compensation appropriate to the memoirs’ sales, which are significant. The two-volume set is regarded as one of the better presidential memoirs ever published.

Throughout the 1960s he continues to make public appearances, particularly to participate in official Washington ceremonies, but his health deteriorates. He dies in a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, in December 1972, at age eighty-eight. He is buried at the Truman Library, in Independence, Missouri, where his wife Bess now lies beside him.

If physicist Dr. Robert Oppenheimer can accurately be called the “Father of the Atomic Bomb,” Groves is its godfather. By sheer strength of will and a personality that few find appealing, Groves succeeds in maintaining a wall of secrecy around the Manhattan Project that seems inconceivable in today’s world.

At the war’s end, he continues to lead what is still labeled the Manhattan District, which in 1947 evolves into the Atomic Energy Commission. Groves is awarded the Legion of Merit and promoted to lieutenant general (three stars) in 1948. Knowing he has consistently made enemies in Washington
by the unyielding fierceness of his personality, which some describe as disgustingly rude, he realizes he can climb no farther up Washington’s military ladder, and later in 1948, he retires. He moves to Darien, Connecticut, and goes to work as an executive for the Sperry Rand Corporation, until he retires again in 1961. He pens a memoir of the Manhattan Project in 1962 and returns to Washington. He lives out a peaceful retirement there and dies suddenly from a heart attack in 1970, at age seventy-three. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Immediately after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, Parsons is promoted to commodore. For his actions he is awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, and a Silver Star. In 1948 Parsons is promoted to rear admiral, and later serves as a member of the fledgling Atomic Energy Commission, but remains in the navy, and, appropriately, serves as assistant chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. He dies suddenly of a heart attack in 1953, at age fifty-two, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Returning from the bombing run over Hiroshima, Tibbets finds himself the center of massive public attention, a position with which he is never comfortable. Immediately after the official surrender of Japan, Tibbets is granted permission to visit Tokyo, and learns that, while the airfields near Hiroshima are unusable, it is possible to fly into Nagasaki. Accompanied by two longtime friends, his navigator, Dutch Van Kirk, and his bombardier, Tom Ferebee, Tibbets logically enough keeps his anonymity among the Japanese, and learns to his surprise that the citizenry in Nagasaki is doing what citizens are doing throughout the rest of Japan (and Germany). They are making every effort to return to something of a normal life, even with the virtual destruction of their city. Tibbets comes away from the visit with respect for the civilians, writes, “I felt no animosity, neither did I have a personal feeling of guilt about the terror we had visited upon their land. It was unfortunate of course that these people had been obliged to pay such a price for a war into which their country had been led by a handful of ambitious and ruthless politicians and militarists.”

With the war’s end, Tibbets is still in service to Curtis LeMay, and LeMay orders him to leave Tinian and report to Washington, D.C. Along the way, Tibbets visits Roswell, New Mexico, where he offers a final farewell to many of those who had served the 509th as air and ground crews, most of whom are scheduled to be discharged from the postwar air force.

Expecting to return to something of a normal family life, Tibbets is dismayed to find that he is greatly in demand by newspaper and radio reporters. For the first year after the war’s end, there is little controversy surrounding the dropping of the bomb, most of the attention focused instead on the practical peaceful applications of atomic energy, a topic Tibbets is woefully unqualified to address.

In 1948 Tibbets recognizes the coming of the jet age, and attends Air Command and Staff School to familiarize himself with the new technology. He soon becomes a staunch advocate of the new B-47 bomber, a six-engine jet that enters service in 1951, and he serves as a test pilot for the aircraft, which quickly becomes a primary tool for the increasing needs of the Cold War. As LeMay assumes command of the fledgling Strategic Air Command, Tibbets is brought along.

In 1952 Tibbets is amazed when Hollywood comes calling. Though aware that he has some celebrity status, he does not expect that his life story is to be put on film.
Above and Beyond
stars actor Robert Taylor as Tibbets, and reenacts the story of the bombing of Hiroshima. Tibbets learns firsthand that Hollywood’s version of history can vary considerably from the truth. Tibbets responds to the film’s mixed reviews and unexpected variations of fact with a standard cliché: “Well, that’s show biz.”